


Day Five: Skeleton in the Closet

by Euphorion



Series: Writober [5]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Drinking, M/M, Parties, kind of implied past midorima/akashi, reo/nebuya in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 18:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8221477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Midorima shifted uneasily. He felt ridiculous. There were going to be people there that he knew—well. One person there that he knew, really, but it was one person that he had spent most of his adolescent life trying not to be embarrassed in front of and here he was, about to see him in a social context for the first time in a year, and he was wearing one-piece children’s pajamas. Children’s pajamas so large he was sure Takao had to custom order them. Children’s pajamas that glowed in the dark.
 +I don't know what to say. This whole thing is literally just a setup for a pun.





	

Midorima shifted uneasily. He felt ridiculous. There were going to be people there that he knew—well. One person there that he knew, really, but it was one person that he had spent most of his adolescent life trying not to be embarrassed in front of and here he was, about to see him in a social context for the first time in a year, and he was wearing one-piece children’s pajamas. Children’s pajamas so large he was sure Takao had to custom order them. Children’s pajamas that _glowed in the dark._

“Relax, Shin-chan,” Takao said, nudging his side. “You look cute. Besides, everyone else will be in costume too.”

He was glad, at least, of the makeup. The darkening of the area around his eyes and the whitening of his already pale skin would at least hide any errant blushes he couldn’t contain when Takao called him cute.

It didn’t help that his friend had taken Halloween as an opportunity, as many people did, to bend the laws of what was considered acceptably revealing for mixed company. Midorima had managed to steer him away from his idea for an anatomically “correct” tanuki costume, but unfortunately he’d still had the ears, and he seemed to take revenge by discarding half the fabric involved in the rest of his outfit and drawing whiskers on his cheeks. His black shirt was so short Midorima could see his abs and the bottoms of his ribs, and his paints were so tight that had Midorima been further away he would have sworn they were nothing but paint. Takao had pinned a black tail to the back of them, and, against all odds and logic, declared himself a cat.

Cats, Midorima had been quick to point out, were actually quite modestly covered with their fur. Now he tried a different tactic. “Are you sure of what you’re wearing?” he asked. “Aren’t you cold?”

Takao had laughed him off the first time and laughed him off now, though his breath clouded between them. “What’s the point of asking me if you don’t have a jacket to give me?” He smirked. “Besides, really, you’re wearing much less than me.” He walked his fingers down the ribs painted on Midorima’s side. “Not even flesh on ya.”

Midorima scowled at him, but let himself be pulled through the door and into the party.

He blinked at the crowds around him. It was much warmer in here, especially with the press of people. It smelled like facepaint and alcohol and candy, and something...earthier. Everyone was talking and drinking and laughing too loud for the music to be anything but a vaguely ominous beat. They gathered around a large punch bowl with surprisingly realistic eyeballs floating in it, or perching on various pieces of furniture, though everyone seemed allergic to using the seat of a chair for its intended purpose. He recognized Reo and Nebuya, the hosts of the party; Reo, vampiric in black and red, his curves emphasized by a tight-laced corset, reclined half against a chair and half in his boyfriend’s lap. Nebuya’s own costume was unrecognizable due to Reo’s cape draped over most of him, but he appeared to be shirtless.

Midorima shook his head. Takao had been right about one thing—they both fit right in. 

Takao put a hand on his shoulder, and Midorima leaned slightly downward to listen. “I’ll get us punch,” Takao announced in his ear, and slipped away through the crowd before Midorima could order him not to leave him alone.

He saw Hayama at the punch bowl, talking to a dark-haired boy in an incredibly realistic zombie costume. The boy said something, leaning close, and Hayama laughed, dislodging the hood of his lion’s-mane hoodie. Takao sidled up to them, and Hayama smiled at him, gesturing to his friend. Takao nodded, then glanced at Midorima, who frowned. Were they talking about him?

Evidently, because zombie boy peeled off from the others. As he approached, Midorima was even more impressed by his makeup. His clothes looked as if they had genuinely rotted away in places, and he must have done something with modeling clay or something to build out his jaw and then cut pieces of it away, because the makeup on his face was three-dimensional.

Midorima nodded to him. “Your craftsmanship is to be admired,” he said, gesturing to him.

The boy grinned. “Who, me?” he said. “Nah, I woke up like this.” 

Midorima snorted.

The boy held out a hand. He was wearing latex gloves, which seemed an odd choice. Maybe he’d run out of time after doing the rest of his makeup, or hands were too hard, so he just hid them to preserve the illusion. “Izuki,” he said.

Midorima took his hand. “Midorima.” If the other boy wouldn’t give a first name, neither would he.

Izuki nodded to Takao, who was still talking to Hayama. “Your boyfriend told me you also don’t really know anyone here,” he said, still smiling crookedly. “It’s a lonely life for a dead man walking.”

Midorima resettled his glasses on his face. “Takao is not my boyfriend,” he said. “And I—know people. I just don’t wish to speak to them.”

Izuki’s eyebrows flew up. “I know that feeling,” he murmured.

Takao came back, cups of punch in hand and Hayama in tow. “Hey,” the latter said to Midorima, and then smiled a little shyly at Izuki. “Making friends?”

Izuki was wearing some kind of weird milky contacts but his eyes managed to twinkle even through them. “Friends might be overstating a bit.”

Takao smacked Midorima with the back of his hand. “Shin-chan! Are you being rude to Hayama’s friend?”

About to respond, Midorima caught sight of an unmistakable flash of red. Akashi was leaning against the wall by the door. He was wearing a sleek black suit, and he had an intricate golden crown angled over one ear in a way that would make anyone else look sloppy or rakish but on him was still somehow impossibly precise. 

He caught Midorima looking at him, and suddenly they were across the chessboard from one another like they were in middle school again. Midorima—towering over almost everyone here—felt simultaneously too tall and insignificantly small; felt the weight of everything he had failed to prove press in on him with every loud exclamation or fit of drunken giggles from the crowd. People moved between them, but Akashi never broke his eye contact, raising his bat-pattern solo cup to his lips like it was the most elegant of wine glasses. Finally he gave Midorima the slightest of nods, and Midorima sagged, feeling like a puppet with his strings cut.

From his side, coming into focus as if Midorima were clearing the static from a radio channel, Hayama said, “oh, yeah, you and Akashi used to be close, right?”

He blinked and looked at his companions. Takao was watching him sideways, his face unusually sober. He was standing close, leaning sideways a little into Midorima’s space. Close. _Close_ was what he and Takao were. _Close_ was not a thing he’d thought Akashi capable of, not a thing he thought himself capable of until Takao. “I’m not sure I would go that far,” he said, uncomfortable. “As your dead friend said, friends may be overstating it a bit. Akashi does not have friends.”

Hayama cocked his head at him. “Sure he does,” he said. “Me and Reo-nee and Nebuya, we’re his friends. I’m sure he considers you a friend, too.” 

“I see,” said Midorima, and drank his punch.

Later, they somehow ended up on the furniture vacated by Reo and Nebuya (Midorima had a feeling, with the way Nebuya had a hand moving up and down Reo’s corseted side all night, that they’d retreated upstairs). Izuki was sitting on the floor. He seemed tired, or something—Hayama kept giving him concerned looks. Midorima was stubbornly sitting in a chair properly, though he’d had quite a bit to drink, so he was perhaps not maintaining his posture very well.

He’d honestly expected Takao to abandon him, go make new friends, new—”friends”. He was certainly dressed for it. But since he’d briefly seen Akashi Takao hadn’t left his side, and was not very literally plastered against it. He’d tried to sit on the arm of the chair, but ended up laughing too hard at something Izuki said and slipping down so he was half in Midorima’s lap, one of his arms slung over Midorima’s shoulders for stability, his long legs in a tangle all over Midorima’s own.

They’d lapsed into a comfortable, drunken sort of silence, but suddenly Takao said, quite loudly, “I don’t like him.”

They all turned to stare at him. He made a face. “Sorry,” he said, “but I don’t like him. Akashi.”

Hayama looked uncomfortable. He raised a shoulder in a very slow shrug. “He’s—a bit hard to like,” he said slowly, and then Izuki hit him in the knee and hissed something, and then Midorima couldn’t pay attention to them anymore because suddenly Takao was very much _actually_ in his lap, his face very very close to Midorima’s face, his blue eyes earnest. 

“I know you two have your weird intense—thing,” he said, lowering his voice. The crowds had quieted some but Midorima still felt pulled forward to hear him better, his eyes drawn to Takao’s mouth, to the shape of his words. “I don’t understand it and I would prefer to never think about it but I don’t like that just seeing him made you all—” he shifted, a frustrated full-body twitch that made Midorima almost swallow his tongue, “—quiet.”

“I’m always quiet,” Midorima pointed out, proud that it came out relatively steady. 

Takao shook his head, his hands skimming over Midorima’s shoulders, his eyes tracing over his face. Midorima wondered at his own certainty that, even through what felt like a hundred pounds of paint, Takao could still read him better than anyone in the world. “Not like this,” he said, his voice certain. His fingertips brushed Midorima’s jaw. “You don’t deserve this,” he said seriously. “You deserve someone who makes you happy.”

The problem with alcohol was that it sped up some things and slowed down others. For example, Midorima’s heart was moving very fast. His mind was moving very fast. His mind and his heart were pounding with a simultaneous, terrifying truth, a truth that rang in him like a bell: _you make me happy. You make me happy._ His mind had the words lined up, curled up in his tongue, waiting for his mouth to catch up and actually say them. 

And then Hayama said, “oh my god, okay, we really have to leave _right now_.”

Takao turned to look around at them, and Midorima—internally cursing himself as a traitor—left the bell unrung, peering around him. Hayama was helping Izuki to his feet—well—one of this feet. The other appeared, utterly impossibly, to have fallen off.

Izuki leaned down and grabbed it, then gave them both a sort of panicked grin. “Nice to meet you guys,” he said. Hayama slung an arm around him, his own face a similar rictus of panic and laughter (though with less visible bone). 

“By the way, Midorima,” Izuki called over his shoulder as Hayama helped him shamble away, “I figured out what your costume is.”

Midorima frowned, frowned harder as Takao climbed off his lap with a sigh. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a skeleton in the closet!” Izuki called, and Hayama laughed so hard they both almost fell over.

Takao chuckled, too, though it sounded a little sad, and held out a hand for Midorima to take. “Let’s go home, Shin-chan.”

Midorima nodded, letting him pull him to his feet. He held onto Takao’s hand for a moment after he was standing, looking down at him. “Takao.”

Takao looked at him sideways, his whiskers smudged, his shirt askew, impossibly, breathtakingly beautiful, and close, and not put off my Midorima’s hand in his. And. Maybe he couldn’t yet have the rest. Maybe he wasn’t yet ready to ring the bell, to step forward and be someone who could. Have. His mind stopped there, unable to encompass what it would even look like to step past his lifetime of self-inscribed boundaries. But—it was okay. As much as Takao poked and prodded and tested and pulled and challenged him, as much as every single day with him was _new_ in a way Midorima had never and probably would never understand, it was. It was different. Takao expected nothing from him but that which he expected from himself.

There was nothing he had to prove.

He shook his head, and Takao smiled at him. He didn’t let go of his hand, just pulled him through the scattered remains of the party and out into the cold. Midorima caught sight of himself in a glass shop window, a too-tall glow-in-the-dark skeleton, wandering aimlessly through the night.

He snorted to himself, saw his reflection do the same, and—his hand clasped warm in Takao’s—he started to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> So you may or may not have caught on to the fact that this takes place in the same universe as my [Writober Day 3 prompt where Izuki is a literal zombie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8200502), and no of course all of my writober fics don't take place in one giant supernatural crossover universe ha ha ha why would anyone do that to themselves that sounds like a nightmare!!!


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